Thursday, 13 July 2017

The Waters of Lurekin are an assembly of waterfalls, ponds, and rivers in Gderet. The delta is beautiful on its own, but the waters are also a place of power with some fame in the region. Numerous old battlefields in the vicinity mean lots of spirit collectors, who come here to cleanse themselves of the spirits trapped within them. Also, fleeters seem to have a liking for the spot and can often be met in and around the waters.

"By all rights the Waters should be within Nalsiir's borders. It's unfair they put down their oversized weight to rob us of our rights to possess such an important place. One day they'll learn they can't treat us this way."— Bakaada Tsureen, Nalsiirian

The waters are a famous place to make the voiceless into speakers, granting formerly ordinary people the power to cast spells by channeling the Fifth Power. There is also a fairly large hall of voices here that manages to remain almost entirely invisible to the visitors unless actively sought, even if the place is teeming with listeners who also accompany the visitors to dangerous tasks if necessary.

"Lurekin is a fascinating name. It's the name of a nearby city that now lies in ruins; three speakers of the name are known, but only two came through here; finally, there's an artifact called Lurekin's cap, which isn't a hat at all."— Ma'apik, historian

Artists' notesThat mages aren't only born but can also be made is one of my most important decisions about Genius Loci, I think. It's also nice for the artistic side because, naturally, places where such a change can be accomplished will be mysterious, legendary, remarkable in many ways and therefore, fun to paint.

Thursday, 6 July 2017

Most people know their house medicine against everyday sicknesses and small injuries. For anything beyond, apothecaries provide sophisticated healing aids, and larger cities at the least have proper hospitals with surgeons and therapists. Dwarves with their delicate hands make great surgeons, and speakers come to all medical professions and exact their obsessive ways to become experts in their fields.
The red forest provides poisons which, in proper dosage, are medicinally useful, and there is barely a sickness for which a cure cannot be found in there; but it's difficult to travel, and many cures still await their discovery.

"I was astonished when they brought me a redforester - a sick redforester? I couldn't find what was wrong with her until a desperate attempt, following a seemingly outlandish theory, revealed the cure to be tsemakar venom and the matching antidote. Apparently, redforesters need to be poisoned daily to be well."— Jraneh, apothecary

Elves are proverbially "more different than others", and display a range of differing reactions to normal medicine. But in the end, every species has its preferences; garren show better healing when the medicine is applied hot, raganaj when it's based on animals, both as well as dwarves show in their colouring when they're not well.
Most sicknesses affect all species, if not always with the same symptoms; bluefinger disease, for example, does the same to everyone, while only shankeh can get straipiness, and only humans suffer from the cold (which is a source of amusement to other species - stand them in cold water, they get sick. Hilarious.).

"My shankeh patients would have needed rest to heal properly, but their need to run always drove them out of bed and their condition worsened. So I finally, if arguably, turned to the practice of either putting a nail into the knee, or breaking the leg altogether."— Vranejar, Gamahanian doctor

Artists' notesThere's always this chance when building a world that you either make it a hellhole where everything's dangerous and rotten, or way too nice because every problem has been solved, so I design diseases and poisons carefully (and civil wars, insanity, and tyrannies). The red forest may well treat everything there is from cancer to the common cold, but finding anything is bloody difficult. Literally.It's fun to come up how elves react differently to things, and define the miniscule differences between species' physiology, seen from a medic's perspective. There are of course lists of these, but I won't bore you with them.

About Me

Ranarh is the artistic alias of sci-fi/fantasy painter, illustrator, and concept artist Jennifer S. Lange. She enjoys spaghetti, lightsabers, and jellyfish. Jennifer lives in northern Germany with her fiancè and a blackbird.